ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Notorious_%281946_film_poster%29.jpg

Notorious, Alfred Hitchcock, 1946

Morbsies #52
Sight & Sound Critics #133

never been able to watch it. i think its a very badly directed and acted movie.

i expect this not to be the consensus

Whole thing is on youtube here

never been able to watch it. i think its a very badly directed and acted movie

challops of all challops

Probably Hitch's best film, Cary Grant's best "dark" performance, the thing is an expertly wound clock.

That's a silly thing to say, but it is good

Claude Rains is great too!

Louis Calhern okay too but a standard performance. Anyway the whole thing is on the vector that leads through Vertigo to Marnie of the crepey male lead but with 40s glamour to boot.

I enjoyed Evil (OR IS HE?) Cary Grant in Suspicion, though the film itself was definitely c-tier Hitchcock at best.

Y’all with these Hitchcock tiers now.

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film fans otm

Meh, swap out Dial M for Murder for any one of the four on the other side, but probably most especially The Birds or Shadow of a Doubt.

Rope? Rebecca?

George Sanders is turning over in his grave.

To catch a thief is basically unwatchable

I like all the Bergman ones, including under Capricorn which is a deeply weird film but not like his terrible weird films like the trouble with Harry

Re what someone said earlier , yes Hitchcock is very tiered.

Marnie is only okay. Psycho beats vertigo for me, but mainly for the first section before she arrives at the motel. So lurid! the way the camera follows Leigh around in her sweater is obscene! I also think Perkins is so sweet in it. ('I'd love a sandwich!' - me.)

Vertigo score is the best and the moments of abstraction keep their strangeness while the tricks in e.g. rear window wear off after a few watches

Rear window is fun to watch with people who've only seen cartoon parodies that only follow the plot until the first big twist.

The Simpsons ep that is based on Rear Window is just as good as the film

To catch a thief is basically unwatchable

It's a nice foreign holiday for two hours, and I like the Franju-esque cat burglar stuff at the end.

TCAT is minor Hitchcock, but it moves and doesn't waste time. Before you make claims about unwatchable try watching Jamaica Inn, The Paradine Case, I Confess, or Topaz.

LOL I Confess at least has a far from unwatchable Monty, and Jamaica Inn has Laughton, likewise. I know it has its admirers, but Under Capricorn is the unwatchable one for me, in part because it seems to have fallen out of copyright so there are no decent restorations of it on physical media.

Have read back, I now know Under Capricorn it has its admirers including plax

I find Marnie ponderous and deeply stupid but I'm in the minority.

I'm sure I floated the idea on here somewhere that Marnie is Hitchcock's Giallo, and I'm sticking with that.

Glad we're all discussing every Hitchcock except the one just posted :)

The only thing anyone remembers about To Catch a Thief (and why it scores highly on general public) is the fireworks kiss

Late to this but plax talking truth

hitchcock shd make a movie abt whoever designed that unreadable square venn diagram

I think I like *I Confess* more because of the Canadian (?) flick that metaed it in the late 80s

There's a lot of Hitchcockian joy in random misfires tho, The Wrong Man is really good

whoever designed that unreadable square venn diagram

Saul Bass

Canadian (?) flick

Le Confessionnal), taking advantage of I Confess having been shot in Québec.

Good shout ta

TCAT is v watchable but plax wrong is better than many right

The sexiest and best scene in To Catch a Thief is when Grant swims out to the float to talk to Brigitte Auber, and then Grace Kelly swims out to join them

Just saw Dial M for Muder with 3-D glasses and there is really no good reason for that film to be in 3-D. One single effect in the big violent scene scene stays with me. If anything the 3-D makes Hitchcock's rear projection shots look worse.

Dial M just happened to be unluckily made in the first wave of trying to make 3D happen yeah?

I think I'd still argue that Gravity is the only 3D movie that uses it and transcends gimmickry

I'd say Herzog's documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

Cool I shd see that then

xps Yeah and I think Dial M was rarely actually shown in 3-D when it was released, most theaters choosing to show the flat version of it.

But I've seen '50s films that do use 3-D very effectively, such as Creature from the Black Lagoon and Kiss Me Kate.

Foster Hirsch's new Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties is good on the effect of 3D on production.

I just read that book and it's pretty great. Also the chapter on CinemaScope and other wide screen processes is very enlightening.

In fact that book is tied into the recent programming at the Film Forum in Manhattan where they've been showing a bunch of '50s films including 3-D ones. Hirsch has been there introducing some of the films.

I managed to miss that whole series but I did see Dial M for Murder in 3D back in the 80s at the 8th Street Playhouse, I think. The scissors are the only 3D that I remember.

yep the hand reaching out and the scissors is that one effect I was referring to

Also saw the 3D Dial M for Murder in the 1980s, w/ red and green glasses.

House of Wax has good gimmicky 3D effects.

Godard's Goodbye to Language has the most woozily disorientating use of the 'modern' 3D process I've ever seen.

Glad we're all discussing every Hitchcock _except_ the one just posted :)

I’m a big fan of Notorious, don’t know what to say about it right now. Claude Rains plays a similar kind of role in David Lean’s The Passionate Friends. Also like the way it is used in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. The long long shot that goes from very wide to a tight tight closeup he liked to do so much is particularly well done in the famous example here.

Anyway, Notorious. While I do rank it in the top tier, I think what plax said about Rear Window applies more, with me, to Notorious. Once Hitch's hand is revealed, all that's left on rewatch is the thrill of the mechanics and the admittedly considerable spectacle of Cary Grant in Bastard Mode™.

But obviously that's minor carping. I just give a slight edge to the Hitches that are less in control, is all.

a lot of the joy of Hitch is the thrill of the mechanics

it suddenly occurs to me